Will NIN solve identity management issues?

ADEYEMI ADEPETUN, in this report, writes that while the National Identification Number (NIN) is getting entrenched in the Nigerian system, its impact on security remains critical.  

Identity management is very key to the economic success of countries, especially developing ones. Countries racing to catch up with developments are working ceaselessly to develop robust and responsible identity ecosystems for progress and humanitarian action.
  
Such countries are buoyed by the need to establish identity-for-all, not just as a legal right, which is consistent with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16.9, but also as a practical necessity to enable inclusive access to services.
   
Luckily, there is already a non-governmental international movement, the ID4Africa, which is supporting African countries in this drive. ID4Africa believes that service-oriented identity ecosystems built on the respect of privacy and human rights are essential for growth of digital economies and will become even more crucial as African countries move to implement the provisions of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA).

Identity management as a World Bank project
Nigeria’s national digital identity ecosystem project is World Bank supported; thereby underlining the importance of the project, for the economic management of the over 200 million population of the country – where planning and budgeting form key planks for growth. Other international funding agencies supporting the Nigeria Digital Identity Ecosystem Project are the Française de Dévelopement (AFD) and the European Union (EU) Bank.
  
The project was one of the five projects approved by the World Bank on February 18, 2020 at its headquarters in Washington DC, the United States.

World Bank Country Director for Nigeria, Shubham Chaudhuri, had said: “The World Bank is ramping up its support to Nigeria in its efforts to lift 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.”
  
According to the World Bank statement: “This will enable people in Nigeria, especially marginalised groups, to access welfare-enhancing services. The project will also enhance the ID system’s legal and technical safeguards to protect personal data and privacy.

About 60m unique NIN issued
After shifting registration deadline from December 30, 2020 to October 31, 2021, by the Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, led by the Minister, Dr. Isa Pantami, the NIMC has focused significantly on the NIN, and thus far issued over 60 million NINs to Nigerians, with average of three to four SIMs per NIN linked.
   
NIMC had explained that it chose to concentrate on enrolling Nigerians and legal residents and issuing the NIN over a physical plastic electronic ID owing to the high cost of the latter, given the country’s current economic challenges. Besides, globally, the security number as a form of identification is most adopted; in the United States, it is the Social Security Number, in the United Kingdom, it is the National Insurance Number while in India the Aadhaar number is adopted. In these instances, it is just the number the enrollee is issued.
   
While the NIN records are in the National Identity Database (NIDB), attaining the 60 million has not been easy, as many Nigerians, in the last eight months, were made to go through various harrowing experiences, registering and linking their NINs to their SIMs, especially having had to queue several hours daily for the exercise, at a time COVID-19 raged fiercely.  
   
The citizens’ challenges were made worse by the inability of the majority of the 203 Federal Government licensed registration firms to commence the exercise, owing to lack of funds and logistics.    
   
However, as at July 24th, 2021, there were over 5,500 enrolment locations within and outside the country, expected to significantly ease the NIN enrolment process and subsequent linkage of NIN to SIM.
 
With more numbers of enrolment centres within and outside the country, and many more coming up, the NIMC said every citizen, legal resident, and Nigerian citizens living in diaspora are expected to be able to obtain their NINs in the shortest foreseeable time.

NIN, ghost identities and bandits’ reign
NIN’s impact on security challenges in Nigeria remains minute, despite many Nigerians having to queue in the scorching sun for days for registration during the pandemic.  
   
Today, assaults by criminals on the public remain huge. Bandits, kidnappers, terrorists, among other criminal elements in the society have remained emboldened, carrying out their nefarious activities without trace despite the NIN-SIM identity infrastructure.
  
In the bandits-proned North East, this Federal Government’s security regulations have been thwarted many times. Reports have it that residents of Katsina, Zamfara and Kaduna states that recounted their experiences in kidnappers’ dens, said they made the bandits’ telephone numbers available to security agents.
  
They, however, lamented that nothing was done to apprehend the criminals, thus making a mess of the Federal Government’s directives on registration of telephone subscribers and the linkage of SIM with the NIN.
 
Besides, digital footprints of electronic fraudsters are still very much everywhere in the country, the NIN seems not to be effective in this area.
  
Nonetheless, the NIN is having impact on the education sector. For instance, the NIN footprint was seen on the last University Matriculation Examination (UTME), organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
   
According to JAMB, the introduction of the NIN in the 2021/2022 exam registration helped it to uncover over 500,000 fake candidates..
   
The Registrar and Chief Executive of JAMB, Prof. Isha’q Oloyede, who has just been rewarded with a reappointment for his hard work in the first tenure, disclosed this in Enugu, saying his team was at the South-East to assess what was going on with the conduct of the examination. He said the use of the NIN as directed by the Federal Government helped to reduce examination malpractice.